


all the good and bad

by EllisLuie



Series: love is loud(er) [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben is there but Diego's dumb, Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Diego Means Well but he's a lil stupid, Good Brother Diego Hargreeves, He probably needs a hug too, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, I'm convinced Diego taught Klaus how to say fuck, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Past/Implied Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch, Pre-Canon, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Swearing, Ususal Klaus Tags, Withdrawals mention, so is klaus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:40:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25104064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllisLuie/pseuds/EllisLuie
Summary: There had been a brief period of time, when the Umbrella Academy was young and fresh and naively optimistic, where Diego had thought maybe he could be a hero forever.akaDiego gets a call from the hospital about his brother Klaus. He’s conflicted.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: love is loud(er) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807864
Comments: 23
Kudos: 385





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is pretty heavy on diego introspection and also vaguely unreliable narrator-y because we see everything through diego's eyes and. he's a bit blind sometimes. we love him tho, he's just emotionally constipated

There had been a brief period of time, when the Umbrella Academy was young and fresh and naively optimistic, where Diego had thought maybe he could be a hero forever.

They’d been thirteen years old and riding the high of their very first mission, the seven of them alive and together and invincible. Years later, as an adult, he recognized the early signs of collapse, even then: Ben, quiet and distant, never saying anything when they started boasting about the fight. Vanya, cold and sad, always leaving the room. The way Diego started to chafe at Luther’s orders.

But the world had hailed them as heroes, as celebrities, and their father had looked at them with something as close to approval as Diego had ever known. So Diego had turned a blind eye to the cracks in the facade, and dreamed about a future where the six of them saved lives forever. 

The Umbrella Academy, standing tall and strong.

Then Five’s arrogance ripped them apart, and Diego knew they’d never been superheroes, just child soldiers led by a tyrant to stroke his own ego. 

While his siblings learned to rebel by throwing everything Reginald worked for in his face, Diego internalized it all. He remembered the rush of the fight, the way he’d taken down enemies with his knives and his own hands, the way the victims and hostages had looked at him, alive for another day.

They weren’t heroes, but they’d been trained to fight ( _to kill_ ), to save people. As the years passed and it finally seemed possible to escape the Academy, Diego found himself dreaming again. He had all this training, all this knowledge of how to maim and kill, this desensitized view of violence; shouldn’t he use it to help people? He was all for pissing all over Reginald’s work, sure, but not at the expense of actual human lives. Diego had been raised as a killing machine since his hands were big enough to hold a knife; what else was he supposed to do? His training was Reginald’s doing ( _his whole existence was Reginald’s_ ), but his knives and his skills, those belonged to Diego. He would take everything about him that belonged to Reginald, and make it his own. 

There had been a brief period of time, when the Umbrella Academy was in ruins around him and he was taking his first steps in the real world, where Diego thought maybe he could be a hero again.

He left the Academy at seventeen years old and never looked back. He was too young still to join the police like he wanted, but there were other ways to save people in the meantime. He kept up his training, perhaps pushing himself even harder than he’d been pushed growing up, and worked tirelessly to make himself as efficient a fighter as he could be.

Once, on a run through the city, sweat dripping into his eyes and legs screaming in protest, he’d come across Klaus. _Daddy would be proud_ , his brother had said snidely, pale and bruised and completely out of it. Anger had been a close acquaintance of Diego’s since he was small, and his siblings had always been the masters of igniting it. _Fuck off, junkie,_ he’d snarled.

Klaus had, and Diego hadn’t seen him again for six long months.

When he was eighteen, Diego started doing vigilante work. He was living out of the junk pile of a car he’d bought in the days before he left the Academy and being paid under the table to wash dishes at a local dive bar, and for the first time in his life, he felt free. He bought his first police radio from the military surplus store, sharpened his knives, and started waiting for calls. He kept his umbrella tattoo ( _brand_ ) always carefully hidden, and if any of the people he saved ever recognized him, he was quick to make an escape.

The dishwashing job sucked, but he’d done worse for longer, and he’d made friends with the owner of the basement gym he frequented. Eventually, Al let him move into the boiler room, taking whatever savings Diego had as a deposit. Making rent was tight each month, but like hell was he ever going to reach out to rich ol’ Reginald for a handout. He picked up cleaning gigs at Al’s and kept washing dishes.

As soon as he turned twenty-one, Diego applied for the police academy. The thought of being a part of an academy again was sickening, but at least this time he was being paid and the training was a communal thing that wasn’t specifically tailored to break him into pieces. Compared to his childhood schooling, the police academy was almost laughably easy in some respects, but harder in others. Learning to use a firearm was an adjustment, clumsier than his knives, and learning proper and acceptable interrogation techniques was a frustrating exercise. Unsurprisingly, he excelled at defensive training and first aid classes. 

Once again, there had been a brief period of time, when he was awkwardly making friends and working towards a career, where Diego thought he could be normal.

Then the academy had found out about the vigilante work and Eudora had looked at him with a mix of pity and anger - and it all fell apart. He moved out of the halfway decent apartment he’d managed to get with his police earnings, back to Al’s dingy boiler room, and Eudora stopped taking his calls.

Three months later, she’d started talking to him again, but with a cold detachment that hadn’t been there before. He always missed the warmth of her voice and her body the most at night, when he collapsed onto the mattress he’d shoved next to the boiler and tried to force himself to sleep. 

Diego, as a rule, tried not to think about his siblings. It had been so easy at the academy, living a life so separate from the one he’d had as Number Two, that when Beamen and Davis had asked him one drunken night if he had any family, he hadn’t hesitated to smile and say _no_. But now that he had been kicked out of the academy, unceremoniously thrust back into the empty existence he’d worked to get away from, it was harder. He saw Allison’s smiling face everywhere he turned, plastered over billboards and magazines, and he found himself staring out the window whenever big storms hit, wondering whether Klaus had managed to weasel his way indoors for the night.

Diego hated it. He’d left the Academy for a reason, and his siblings had been part of it. He’d been close to them once, he thought, had had favourites like everyone else. But then Ben had died and Vanya wrote that fucking book and Klaus dove headfirst into drugs, and Diego didn’t have favourites anymore.

The only real contact Diego had had with his siblings after leaving the Academy was an awkward phone call with Vanya years before the book, and a handful of chance interactions with Klaus that typically ended in yelling, theft, and, occasionally, rehab. 

He hadn’t even had a run-in with Klaus for over a year now. Diego might have been slightly concerned ( _except he made a point to check out every dead junkie found, every arrest of a smart-mouthed thief he heard on the scanner, had asked every cop he knew to tell him if they came across a Klaus with shitty tattoos and a big mouth_ ), but he knew his brother was too resourceful and too slippery to get caught in any real trouble. Hopefully. 

Besides, last he heard, Klaus had landed himself in prison. Maybe he was still there, or maybe he’d taken it as a wake-up call and turned his life around. Diego didn’t really believe that, but it was easy to lie to himself about these things when his brother wasn’t in front of him to prove him wrong.

Regardless, Diego hadn’t spoken to or heard from any of his siblings in over a year, and he had no desire to seek them out, especially with the tatters of his failed life still clinging to his heels.

So when he got a call one morning from a nearby hospital telling him his brother Klaus was asking for him, he nearly hung up. Nearly snarled something rude to the innocent nurse on the other end of the phone and forcibly forgot about it, washing his hands of Klaus and his bullshit once and for all. 

He’d gotten a few of these calls before, whenever Klaus was too slow or too high to smarm his way out of the doctors’ clutches fast enough. He’d actually gone to see his brother the first few times, to make sure he was real and alive and unhurt, but eventually the overdoses kept coming and Diego was just so tired he started asking the hospital to send him to rehab without even speaking to Klaus.

But Diego had been haunted by his siblings a lot in the past few months, and being booted from the police academy had done nothing for his anger issues. Klaus had always been an easy target for that anger, flaws on full display, and he always seemed to shrug it off so easily. Diego couldn’t take out his frustration on caveman Luther, his favourite target, not without getting dangerously close to the real source of his anger, so Klaus was probably the next best thing, all things considered.

Instead of dismissing the call, Diego counted his breathing with Mom’s voice in his head and asked for the address.

-

Diego spent the drive to the hospital thinking.

He couldn’t keep doing this, he decided. Couldn’t come running at Klaus’s every beck and medical call, couldn’t keep enabling the behaviour. Clearly, it wasn’t achieving anything except teaching Klaus that Diego was a sentimental idiot who would keep handing him opportunities to spit in his face.

Diego’s relationship with Klaus was - complicated. Twisted and thorny and painful every time one of them so much as twitched. But it also stemmed from a childhood of solidarity and genuine feeling - not love, Diego didn’t want to label it love when all he could see of his brother now was the sharp edged drug addict crawling through windows - but something strong enough that Diego had always been protective of his brother. Diego had been protective of all of them as kids, Klaus and Ben and Vanya, and Allison too when she wasn’t basking in Luther’s shadow. 

But then Ben hadn’t needed his protection anymore ( _not that it had helped him in the end, because for all his bluster and bravado, Diego couldn’t actually protect him_ ), and Vanya had showed how much she didn’t care for it when she thoroughly cut them out of her life and then published all their secrets for the world to see. So all of Diego’s protective energy, all his “big brother mojo” as Klaus dubbed it, fell to Klaus.

Diego was sick of it.

Sick of being afraid every time he followed up on police calls involving a drug addict with a passing resemblance to his brother, sick of being terrified he’d get a call any day saying Klaus had been found in a ditch somewhere, pumped so full of drugs his heart had given out, or he’d pissed off the wrong dealer and had his head kicked in. 

Diego was so goddamn sick of being Klaus’s brother, the idiot who still cared.

So. He was going to the hospital now to tell Klaus, firmly and with no room for question, that this was it. He was, stupidly, giving his brother one last chance to prove he gave a shit about the bond they’d had as kids, because Diego was done being the only one to try. He’d give Klaus whatever he needed to succeed this time, would find a way to pay for another rehab if he thought it would work, would drag him to support meetings kicking and screaming if he had to - as long as Klaus promised to actually try this time. Klaus could get clean with all the support Diego could find in himself to give, or - or he could take Diego off his hospital forms and forget him completely. 

Diego had lost Five, had lost Ben, was so ~~betrayed~~ angry at Vanya he could barely breathe, and had never had Luther or Allison in the first place. Losing Klaus too might end up being even easier than trying to keep hold of him when he so clearly did not want to be held. Diego had told Beaman and Davis that he didn’t have a family, and if Klaus lied or turned him away now, Diego wouldn’t hesitate to consider that true. Clean break.

Resolve strong and words carefully scripted in his head, Diego marched into Klaus’s hospital room prepared to deliver his ultimatum.

He wasn’t prepared to see Klaus.

The sight of his brother, unexpectedly wan and quiet and injured, threw him. Diego faltered, words dying on his tongue, suddenly wrong-footed and unsure. A quiet voice in his head told him maybe he should have spoken to one of the doctors first before storming in.

Because something was wrong with his brother. Diego had expected an overdose, had gleaned enough from the awkward conversation with the nurse on the phone to know whatever had landed Klaus in the hospital had been drug related, but he hadn’t expected this.

Usually, Klaus was manic and rude when Diego visited his bedside. He didn’t want to be there, didn’t want Diego to be there, and made that exceedingly clear with his biting words and dismissive behaviour.

He wasn’t supposed to be tired and eerily quiet, watching Diego cautiously through hooded eyes, wrapped in bandages and held together with stitches. He wasn’t supposed to be painted black and blue, marked all over with angry red scrapes, littering his arms and neck and face.

Diego stared at the ugly mass of stitches and swelling parading as his brother’s jaw.

“Brother,” the punching bag in front of him finally said, and that wasn’t right, how the fuck could he speak with the bottom half of his face shredded? “So glad you could join us!”

Klaus’s hands shook as he spread them in a parody of his usual theatrics, and an icy feeling took root in Diego’s gut. Something was very, very wrong.

So, being the emotionally well-developed, mature adult of a man he was, Diego turned on his heel and left the room. 

-

The doctor treating Klaus this time around recognized Diego, which was depressing. Diego couldn’t quite remember if she had treated Klaus’s overdoses in the past, or if she had stitched Diego up one of the few times Eudora had hauled him to the hospital to fix up a gunshot wound or broken bone. Either way, it was a disheartening commentary on the state of both his and his brother’s lives that he could have done without

However, it worked in his favour, as she was happy to divulge the information in Klaus’s file.

“Your brother took an almost lethal dose of heroin cut with fentanyl and at least one other unknown substance,” she told him, brisk and professional. “Luckily, he was able to alert someone on the street that he needed help, and they were able to call an ambulance in time.”

Privately, Diego didn’t think any of his siblings had ever been lucky a day in their lives. Well, except Allison, maybe, but it didn’t really count as luck with her advantage, did it? And maybe Vanya, lucky enough to be born ordinary, though that hadn’t prevented her from being bought by Reginald with the rest of them, so moot point.

“His injuries?” he asked, because, yeah, he’d been through the overdose spiel before. But Klaus had never come out the other side looking like _that_ before.

The doctor hesitated, and something sympathetic twisted her features. “Eyewitness accounts suggest he inflicted them on himself,” she said gently, which didn’t make sense. “Aside from the bruises, of course, which look a few days old, and we’re assuming he acquired the cracked rib around the same time. But he must have scratched himself while under the influence of the drugs, and it looks like he took a nasty fall, which led to a minor jaw fracture.”

“He had to have his jaw wired shut when we were kids,” Diego said, which was weird because he hadn’t realized he’d opened his mouth. Things were starting to feel a little fuzzy.

But the doctor didn’t notice, and just nodded. “That history of trauma could have contributed to the injury. He didn’t need surgery this time around, at least, and as long as he’s careful and keeps it bandaged, it should heal on its own.”

She also told him about the traces of other drugs still found in Klaus’s system, the suspicious hand-shaped bruises head-to-toe, and the overall patchwork of past injuries and illness that made up his brother. All common in homeless patients, she said sympathetically, but Diego had stopped listening.

He took a minute to steel himself before entering his brother’s room again. He’d already seen him once, and now he knew the extent of the injuries, but that still didn’t make it easier to meet Klaus’s eyes instead of staring at the cuts on his face. _Scratches_ , the doctor had called them, but Diego had never seen any accidental scratch of his own look like that.

Then he was forcibly reminded that they apparently hadn’t been accidental, and he had to quickly crush that train of thought.

“You know, most families send Christmas cards,” he said, because the room was too quiet and Klaus hadn’t said anything to greet him. “Or yearly newsletters. Monthly, even.”

“Santa wishes I’d sit on his lap,” Klaus said immediately, then winced.

“What the fuck are we doing here, Klaus?” Diego sighed, suddenly exhausted and drained and defeated. Not uncommon emotions around his brother. “There are better ways of checking in with us, bro. A phone call would have worked fine.”

Klaus picked at his fingers, eyes going shifty. There was a nervous tension in his shoulders that Diego wasn’t used to seeing, and he narrowed his eyes, on alert. Klaus jerked his head to the side, away from Diego, and nodded absently at thin air. Good to know that had never changed.

“Actually, lieber Bruder, I have a … request of you.”

And, fuck, even laid out in a hospital bed with his goddamn face shredded (was there still blood under his nails?), Klaus was still _like this_ . Why? What had made him like this, what made him do these things and never stop to open his eyes, why was Diego _still here_ , actually trying to remember how much cash he had on him - 

“I need your help to get clean.”

And Diego - stopped.

“What,” he said, because that did not compute.

Klaus just looked at him with those big green eyes, hands fluttering in his lap, waiting, waiting, for what?

“You want,” Diego said slowly, working through molasses. “To get clean. With my help?”

Klaus’s eyes skittered off to the side, to the same corner he’d nodded at before, then returned to Diego. His head bounced up and down, and the nervous energy radiating from him was almost tangible. 

“ _Why_?” Diego asked, then kicked himself. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, he thought dumbly, don’t question a good thing. This was what he wanted, right? He’d marched in here with the intention of giving Klaus an ultimatum to do just this - but he’d expected a fight, to have to bully Klaus into agreeing, hissing and spitting. He had never, not once in the past few years, expected Klaus to willingly broach the idea himself. What the fuck had been in those drugs?

For a brief second, so quick he might have missed it if he wasn’t studying his brother so closely with open incredulity, something shuttered and dark passed through Klaus’s face. His hands, pale and thin and brittle, wrapped themselves tight in the blankets, knuckles white.

“A psychic told me it was a good time for new beginnings,” he said lightly. “Don’t want to upset the cards, trust moi!”

Well that was obvious bullshit.

But Diego wasn’t willing to upset whatever fragile balance was at play here, wasn’t going to pass up the chance to grab this rare moment of sanity from his brother and run with it. He’d been halfheartedly hoping for this chance since they were fourteen, and that it came now was wholly unexpected, but Diego was never one to pass up on a challenge, especially from one of his siblings.

He thought quickly, already forming plans and changes to his routine in his head.

“Okay,” he said, and didn’t miss Klaus’s surprised jolt, or the way his shoulders finally fell away from his ears. “As soon as the docs clear you, you’ll move in with me. I’ll help with your bandages and shit, and tie you to a goddamn chair as that shit works its way out of your body if I have to. Unless - I could try to get you into rehab again, a nice one. I can call Allison, maybe, or call in a few favours - ”

Klaus was already shaking his head. “If I wanted to go to rehab, I wouldn’t have called you,” he sounded serious, which was a strange and rare thing from him. “I need - I need _your_ help, Di. I don’t think I can, uh, do it on my own, even with the fates on my side or whatever.” He gave a crooked grin.

And, immediately, Diego was sold. Any inevitable doubts that clouded his plans disappeared, because he hadn’t seen this side of Klaus in years. This was the brother that Diego had shoved behind him during screaming matches with Luther, the one who’d dragged him to Griddy’s with Vanya and Five. The one who stood in front of Diego during training, smiling calmly despite the knives flying his way, even when their father yelled at him. The brother Diego, when it was dark and he was alone, feared had left with Five, died with Ben.

Despite the - everything about him, Diego had always been a sentimental idiot for his family. Especially his favourites, and there were precious few of those left. Like fuck was he going to let Klaus go now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for slight discussion of suicide and self-harm

Moving Klaus in with him was a chore.

Diego had to negotiate with Al for a long time before the old bastard agreed, so long as Diego put in extra hours to make the gym _fuckin’ spotless, got it, Hargreeves_? He also had to rearrange his set-up in the boiler room so he had the space to cram an air mattress under the window and put up a curtain for some semblance of privacy. 

The hospital was holding onto Klaus for a few more days to monitor his wounds for signs of infection and make sure everything was out of his system (and keep an eye on his mental state, but Diego refused to acknowledge that just yet). That gave Diego some time to stock his kitchen with things other than raw eggs, and also gave him the chance to awkwardly visit several bookstores and covertly peruse the self-help/improvement aisles.

Klaus would probably laugh himself sick if he ever found out, but Diego was determined not to fuck this up. He knew there likely wouldn’t be a second chance at this; if he failed getting and keeping Klaus sober, he wouldn’t get another try. But while Diego had dragged Klaus out of a number of gutters over the years, he actually had no idea how to help an addict, not really. The only thing he had to work off of was the few times Reginald and Pogo had tried to force sobriety onto Klaus as a teenager. And, well, look how that had turned out.

Diego couldn’t quite bring himself to actually read the books he bought in the days before Klaus was discharged, some deep-seated aversion keeping him from doing anything more than cramming the books under his bed. But he intended to, eventually, once Klaus was actually in his home, real and sober and not, actually, a hallucination. The reality of the situation just hadn’t quite sunk in yet, despite the preparations he’d already made.

He also made sure to visit Klaus in the hospital every day.

Every time he visited, Klaus seemed a little more - off. The doctor had warned him that withdrawals had started to kick in and that the symptoms would be potentially difficult to see. But although Klaus did look sickly and twitchy and feverish, Diego wasn’t sure it was the suckerpunch of sudden sobriety that was affecting his brother.

He didn’t quite know _what_ was affecting his brother, but he did know that their conversations were getting shorter and more stilted every time he came by, and it was getting harder to hold Klaus’s attention. Of course, Klaus had always been flighty and distractible, never quite following conversations to the end, always looking over peoples’ shoulders, at their hands, their shoes, anywhere but their face, and Diego couldn’t even blame any of that on the drugs, since Klaus had been doing it for as long as any of them could remember. But it was strange to see him so distant and _not present_ , all wrapped up in his own head when usually he was a constant explosion of boisterous energy, always living in the moment.

Diego didn’t want to say he was concerned, but it wasn’t helping that the nurses kept shoving pamphlets at him that talked about helping loved ones with thoughts of self-harm and suicide. 

_My brother’s not suicidal_ , he wanted to tell them. _He’s a drug addict that sees ghosts, he doesn’t want to hurt himself_. But he could never quite get the words out, especially when, out of curiosity and boredom (not concern, there was nothing to be concerned about), he opened one of the pamphlets and saw that it listed drug use alongside common types of self-harm. And he supposed he didn’t really have a leg to stand on in the argument, really, with his brother sitting in the hospital bed beside him covered in self-inflicted wounds. 

He kept the pamphlet.

The first night after Klaus was discharged from the hospital, he took one step through Diego’s threshold and immediately vomited. Diego tried not to be offended. 

He let Klaus take the bed while he settled on the air mattress, though he warned Klaus that the arrangement was temporary.

“Maybe if your ass starts paying rent you can have the real bed,” he bitched, tucking the blankets around Klaus’s sweaty, shivering body. “But as soon as you stop looking like the wind will knock you down, you’re downgraded to the floor.”

Klaus rolled his eyes and pointedly turned onto his side, back to Diego.

The air mattress was not comfortable, and did unspeakable horrors to Diego’s back. Klaus woke up looking like death, but like death who’d had a decent night’s sleep. 

Diego would have felt bitter about that, but was too distracted by making sure Klaus didn’t immediately fall on his face and open his stitches when he tried to stand. Diego had never had the pleasure of seeing the effects of withdrawal before, but he had seen Klaus sick as a dog quite a few times growing up, plagued with a shitty immune system that only deteriorated further when he started smoking and snorting shit. It had been a decade or so since, but Diego found that things came back to him quickly, caring for his brother, though mostly he had watched Mom do the real work.

Thank god the vomiting seemed to be a rare occurrence, because Diego really didn’t want to have to pay Al to replace the flooring.

If he had been asked back at the hospital, Diego would have said that living with Klaus would be difficult. The pair of them hadn’t shared a complete and civil conversation since they were sixteen, and they’d both grown up prickly, with all the knowledge they needed to jab at each other’s most sensitive spots. Klaus was a difficult person by nature, and would no doubt pick pick pick at every weak point Diego had with mocking words and manic smiles, made even worse by the withdrawals and cravings. And Diego wasn’t much better, hard and thorny all the way through, always a hair away from anger, often too blinded by his own feelings to see the person in front of him (Eudora used to say he was like a pufferfish, quick to blow up at the slightest threat and so stupid, his own defenses making him dumb and blind). 

If he had been asked, Diego would have been wrong.

It was awkward and suffocating and alien at first, living with a man that was as much of a stranger as he was Diego’s brother. They didn’t know how to exist around each other, having been so far out of each other’s orbit for so long they no longer knew how to navigate conversations. 

It got easier, of course, as Diego stopped making them smoothies for breakfast and learned how to make eggs and waffles, as Klaus stopped talking lowly under his breath at night, hushed voice keeping Diego awake and tense, forcing himself to block out the words after hearing a softly whispered _Ben_.

Sometimes Diego found himself snarking at Klaus with an ease he hadn’t felt since their Academy days, and it wasn’t sharp words meant to hurt, just to tease. It was a novelty that made Klaus smile and bitch back and the knot in Diego’s chest slowly loosen. But then other times Diego would catch himself saying something on the wrong side of insulting, hackles raised, defensive, and _fuck off, junkie_ would ring through his head and he’d force himself to stop talking. Whenever it happened, Klaus would frown into his waffles, shake his head sharply, and the conversation would be stilted and alien again.

Diego read the self-help books.

He wasn’t sure a lot of it was applicable, and some of the stuff that was just didn’t seem likely to work for Klaus, stubborn and eccentric and powered. But he read about replacing addictions with healthier outlets, with hobbies and distractions and new habits, and he remembered, faintly, watching Klaus go from room to room, sibling to sibling, as a child. Reading with Ben, listening to Vanya’s violin, even sitting through Five’s theoretical equations. Distractions, he thought.

After another night of watching Klaus pick at his fingers, still pale and shaky but less likely to collapse at a moment’s notice, Diego dug out an old game of Scrabble Al had given him for his first Christmas outside of the Academy.

Klaus cheated at Scrabble. He used words Diego didn’t recognize and claimed they were this-or-that language, but it wasn’t like Diego would be able to tell if he was bullshitting anyway. And sometimes Klaus would lay down a game-winning word with enough syllables to make Diego’s tongue ache in sympathy, words Diego had no idea how Klaus had heard of before, because _Diego_ certainly hadn’t heard of them before, and when he accused Klaus of making them up, his brother would tilt his head at empty air and then recite a word-for-word dictionary definition. Diego thought twenty-three was a bit late to discover a new power, but figured Reginald wouldn’t have been very impressed by a power to cheat at board games anyway.

“Oxazepam,” Diego said flatly, one and a half weeks into their strange cohabitation. 

“An anti-anxiety drug,” Klaus said smugly, leaning back in his chair. It was getting easier for Diego to look at him, now that the lines on his face were healing, looking less angry and red. His fingers were drumming a frenetic tempo on the table, nails clicking. The board was between them, filled with small three or four letter words, all now overshadowed by the stupid made-up word Klaus had just placed.

“And what the fuck’s a gherkin?” Diego pointed angrily at the word he’d initially let slide because he thought he’d be able to beat it. “You’re making them up, bro.”

Klaus huffed and pushed his chair up onto the back legs, wobbling. “Like a pickle. Completely legal in Scrabble, I assure you, brother mine.”

They didn’t have a dictionary in the house, but at this rate Diego was seriously considering picking one up. He didn’t know where Klaus was getting all these words from, but he wanted to level the playing field a little. Any sympathy he’d had for the way Klaus’s hands shook when he placed the tiles was gone, replaced by the desire to crush his brother at this stupid game.

Suddenly, a thought struck him, and he eyed his brother suspiciously. Klaus quirked an eyebrow at him while Diego thought. He was sober now, the worst of the withdrawals having been worked through in the past few days, so maybe…

Diego stuck an accusing finger in Klaus’s face. “If you’re getting an advantage with - with your ghosts or whatever, then I’m calling that cheating.”

Klaus blinked a few times, looking surprised. “I don’t think that’s in the official handbook,” he said.

“I don’t think I care,” Diego rebutted. “You said we couldn’t play darts because my powers were cheating, so your ghosts are too.”

Klaus didn’t argue the point, so Diego was counting it a win in his favour. He started clearing up the board, dumping the tiles in the box haphazardly. Klaus didn’t make a move to help, but he never did, so that wasn’t a surprise. Klaus didn’t move or say anything at all as Diego tucked the box away behind the dresser, didn’t even twitch as Diego dropped heavily back into the chair beside him. He seemed to be thinking about something, biting his lip and staring off into space. Diego eyed him worriedly, uncomfortably hyperaware lately whenever Klaus disappeared like this. (He wasn’t concerned, there was nothing to be concerned about, they were fine.)

“Diego,” Klaus said slowly, staring resolutely at the table. His nails picked at the rough grain of the corner, pick pick pick. “You know I’m - sober, right now.”

“Yeah, of course,” Diego said readily. “And I didn’t even have to tie you to a chair after all. Though it might have helped that you could barely piss by yourself those first few days.” Klaus didn’t even smile at the attempt at humour, which made Diego uneasy.

Klaus suddenly looked up, eyes meeting Diego’s with a quiet intensity that threw him off. 

“If I told you, now that I’m clean, that I can see Ben,” Klaus said, quiet and devastating. “What would you say?”

Diego remembered those first few nights, hearing Klaus mutter softly in the dark, hearing their brother’s name fall, suspended, between them, an undetonated bomb. He remembered the days after Ben’s death, all of them too scared to ask Klaus the question they desperately needed the answer to. He remembered the funeral, where Klaus had been the highest he’d ever seen him, spinning out of control, faster and faster and faster. He remembered Klaus crying and pointing at empty air, slurring his words, all of them mourning and broken and angry, yelling and pushing and accusing until Klaus disappeared through the front door and didn’t come back the next morning. He remembered stitches and pamphlets and scratches. 

“I,” he said, voice too rough, Klaus’s eyes burning him. “I’d say… that I believe _you_ believe you can see him. I’d say years of extended drug use and - and a history of m-mental health issues can make people - see things.” The words were bitter and foreign on his tongue, not his own, parroted from the book stashed under his bed. He’d read the words and hadn’t been able to fit them to his brother, sleeping in the bed next to his, but had memorized them anyway. He’d read them and hadn’t expected to need them. 

Klaus was still and quiet, gaze still boring twin holes in Diego’s forehead. His hands had stopped twitching, a break in their usually constant fidgeting. It was unnerving.

“Ben always won at Scrabble,” he said suddenly. “He knew the best words.”

Diego’s mouth was dry. “Yeah,” he croaked. 

Klaus looked suddenly frustrated, consternation twisting his features. He abruptly shoved away from the table, so sudden and violent Diego couldn’t help but flinch. He didn’t say anything as Klaus stomped to the bathroom, didn’t protest when he slammed the door shut with more force than the old wood could probably handle. They’d disregarded the open-door rule three days ago, and Diego couldn’t bring himself to say anything at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> saw the s2 trailer yesterday and i have a lot of Feelings

Diego knew Klaus could see ghosts. He knew, objectively, that his brother saw dead people of all kinds, and had done since they were kids. He knew Ben was dead, and that any outsider would draw the obvious conclusion.

But  _ Ben  _ and  _ ghost  _ and  _ Klaus  _ did not fit together in his head. His mind rebelled against it, horrified and terrified all at once. It clung to the memory of Klaus at the funeral, off his face and still claiming to see their departed brother, despite the fact they all knew the drugs blocked his powers, made him useless and ordinary. Klaus had been a mess, just like the rest of them, stretched so thin he’d been like a rubber band about to snap, and when he started pulling siblings aside, babbling about Ben, Reginald had intervened. The argument had been spectacular, one of the worst Diego could remember occurring within the Academy walls, louder and angrier than Five’s pubescent outrage at the dinner table lifetimes ago.

Diego remembered, vaguely, how Allison had slapped Klaus. She’d been apologetic, later, but by then he was long gone and the only ones to hear her teary apologies were Diego and Luther. 

Klaus had never mentioned seeing Ben’s ghost again after that, at least not to Diego. They had all assumed it had been a temporary grief-driven delusion, or perhaps just a grieving brother acting out to make them pay attention to the way he hurt.

Now Diego thought back to that day with a sickening horror. He wondered if Klaus’s mind had already started unraveling from the drugs, even back then, and then he wondered how bad it must have gotten since then, after none of them had even thought to help. They’d known he was seeing things, clearly, had known he was abusing drugs, but they’d let him leave anyway.

And now Klaus was the most sober he’d been in a decade and still hallucinating their dead brother, gouging lines in his own face.

Diego had known back at the hospital that they’d be lucky not to see this kind of lasting damage on Klaus’s mind. He’d had hushed conversations with the doctor about it, thought he’d been prepared. But he hadn’t anticipated feeling like his heart was being crushed, tight and painful. Hadn’t anticipated hearing Ben’s name, thrown like a challenge. 

He didn’t want to be angry at Klaus, not for something he couldn’t help, but he was. He was furious. It was his default response to situations he didn’t know how to handle, he knew that, and this situation was so far out of his comfort zone that he had no idea what to do. It didn’t help that Klaus had always presented as an outlet for that anger. But not this time, Diego had to keep telling himself, he couldn’t take out his anger on Klaus right now.

All the same, he was guiltily relieved that Klaus didn’t come out of the bathroom before Diego turned in for the night. He debated waiting, but he didn’t know what to say to Klaus, didn’t know if he could look at him without yelling, and he was tired. He put a glass of water next to the bed, a paltry peace offering, and then withdrew to the air mattress. He tried to keep an ear out, in case Klaus crept to the bed, but everything was still quiet when he finally dropped to sleep. 

He woke up to Klaus pilfering his wallet.

There was a wild look in his brother’s eyes, and Diego had seen him high as a kite, desperate for a hit before, but not quite like this. Klaus had always been a barely contained tornado of a being, a whirlwind of activity and words, doubly so when under the influence. But he wasn’t like that now. Diego’s wallet dangled from his hand as he froze, prey caught by a hunter, and the unhinged brightness of his eyes was unnerving. Diego peered up at him from the air mattress, sore and stiff and so painfully unsurprised.

The anger was back, or maybe it had never left, and as Diego took in the scene before him, he struggled to remember why he should bother to stifle it. 

“Klaus,” he said, low and dangerous. Something in his voice must have set off alarm bells, because his brother flinched back. “What the  _ fuck  _ are you doing.”

There was no answer forthcoming, but that was fine, because Diego was pretty fucking clear on what was going on.

He was on his feet before he really registered moving, yanking his wallet out of Klaus’s slack hands. Klaus didn’t protest, just shrunk in on himself, refusing to even meet Diego’s eyes, and that was weird too, wasn’t it? He’d stolen from Diego before, and he’d always had an excuse falling from his lips by the time Diego noticed, always tried to brush him off, laugh in his face. It was strange to see him hug his elbows in the face of Diego’s anger now, ducking his head, not even attempting to provoke him more, to stoke his anger until Diego could barely speak.

It was weird and unusual and not like his brother, but Diego didn’t care. He was tense and raw, having dreamt about Ben, about Ben’s funeral, his voice, his fucking body, and now his drug addict brother was stealing from him to fund his next fucking high, even though Diego had reorientated his whole goddamn life to help him get clean.

He almost didn’t realize he’d started yelling.

“Why do you keep putting that shit in your body? Ever since we were kids, poisoning yourself for fun, and why? To stick it to Dad? Well, he doesn’t give a shit about us, he never has, so the only person you’re punishing is yourself. And me, your dumbass brother, because I was stupid enough to believe you when you said you wanted to stop! I won’t make that fucking mistake again, trust me,” he fumed, vicious and blind and tired. Klaus’s lack of response only infuriated him further, because Klaus had never failed to take up the other end of an argument, had never hesitated to laugh, except now apparently Diego wasn’t even worth the effort.

“I get that you hate this family,” he pressed, because he did. Message received, loud and clear. “That you don’t give a fuck about us. I don’t know what we did to make you decide to run away and shoot up to get away from us, but whatever it was, I’m fucking sorry. You’re not the only one with shit, you know? But at least we don’t need to destroy ourselves the way you do, at least we’re not weak - ”

And suddenly Klaus wasn’t apathetic anymore, stopped being the tightly coiled shadow shaking in the middle of the room. His head shot up and there was an intensity wrapped in his features that made Diego stumble to a halt, because Klaus was irritating and loud and liked to yell as much as the rest of them, but he was rarely  _ angry _ .

“Fuck you,” Klaus spat, and his anger didn’t run hot like Diego’s. He didn’t yell, just kept his voice level and cold, and somehow that was worse. “You don’t know anything about me, about the drugs, my powers.”

“Your powers haven’t fucking worked since we were fourteen,” Diego snarled. “You made sure of that.”

“Because they were killing me!” Klaus shouted, chest heaving. “You have  _ no  _ idea, asshole.”

“Because you never told us anything!” Diego yelled right back, and this was familiar, arguing with Klaus about his place in the Academy, their family, his disregard for his powers. “You decided the drugs were better than us, so you left, and you never cared what that did to the rest of us.”

Silence fell over them, Diego’s hands clenched into fists at his sides, Klaus breathing heavily into the quiet air. 

Slowly, logic and reason started to filter back into Diego’s brain. He took in the sweat on Klaus’s brow, the light still on in the bathroom which meant he’d probably slept in there, if he slept at all, and the uneasy way his brother shifted from foot to foot. Fuck. Goddamnit, Diego had read the pamphlets, had read the books, he’d known there would be risk of relapse, had known to keep an eye out for the cravings getting too bad, yet he’d still argued with Klaus and then let him spend the night alone in the bathroom of all places. Frankly, they were just lucky there was no window in there.

He sighed and made the effort to loosen his hands into less threatening positions. He squeezed his eyes shut, just for a moment, just so he wasn’t seeing Klaus in front of him. His anger was still burning and he just needed a minute to pack it away. “Sorry,” he said, feeling a headache forming. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have - ”

“ _ Stop doing that! _ ” Klaus yelled, sudden and loud and jarring. Diego’s eyes fell open in surprise. “Stop - being nice, treating me like I’m - I’m fucking fragile, or something. You’ve never been this nice to me, you’ve always been a dick - you’ve never sat and played fucking  _ Scrabble _ with me, never let me bitch at you about your goddamn waffles without hitting me before. Just stop it, okay, please.”

This was unexpected. Diego spent a second just getting his bearings back, anger all but forgotten, replaced by a sinking feeling of confusion. He’d missed something, clearly, and it felt important.

“You… want me to be mean to you?” he asked, just to make sure. 

Klaus shook his head sharply, deflating. “I just want you to be my brother,” he said, sounding exhausted. “I’m not a child, Diego. You don’t have to treat me like I’ll break if you tell me off for being an asshole. I  _ am  _ an asshole, and I’ve been a homeless addict for years. You know what kind of shit that entails? I’ve had dealers break my ribs because they said I underpaid them, I’ve had customers bust my lip for being too jumpy, too high and shaky. I’ve had random people on the street scream at me for being high, or for being homeless, or for just existing in general. I’m not made of fucking glass, Diego, jesus.” He twitched his hand as if batting away a fly. 

If they were a normal family, maybe Diego would be more concerned that common decency was so foreign to the both of them that Klaus felt he was being treated like a child when Diego refrained from yelling at him or thumping him for days at a time. But they’d never been normal, and Diego was still caught on something.

“Customers,” he repeated, and his voice sounded strange.

Klaus blinked at him, nonplussed. 

“You said ‘customers’ would bust your lip,” Diego said, and his voice was definitely not his own. “Just now. You said ‘customers’. What does that mean? What kind of customers?”

He thought the way Klaus rolled his eyes was unnecessary and uncalled for, considering he felt like these were valid and important questions. There was a roaring in his ears he didn’t appreciate, and ugly ideas were starting to take root.

“You did get the homeless drug addict part, right?” Klaus asked, sounding closer to his usual belligerence. “Not like I can hold down a typical nine to five. ‘Hey, Boss, do you mind if I use my smoke break to snort crack off the cubicle?’ How the fuck do you think I made the money to buy the drugs?”

And - it made an awful kind of sense, really. If Diego had ever sat down and really thought about it, he probably would have considered the possibility. He’d seen enough arrests and heard enough stories to know the realities of making a living on the streets. But he never had, never sat down and let himself think that hard about it, because it was easier not to. That was the kind of shit other people did to get by, not Klaus, his stupid, harmless brother. He’d known Klaus was on the streets, had known he’d had nowhere to go after leaving the Academy, but he’d just assumed the petty theft was the worst of it, other than the drugs. There were enough shitty but priceless trinkets in the Academy that he figured Klaus would just keep stealing and selling them to get by.

But Klaus hadn’t been in the Academy for years, right? So how could he have gotten a hold of those ornaments. Fuck, it was so obvious. Of  _ course  _ Klaus would have needed other ways to make money, fuck, it wasn’t like drugs were cheap, Diego knew that. 

Diego suddenly remembered, in vivid detail, every time he’d caught Klaus cleaning out his wallet. Every time he’d snatched his money back and chased him away. 

The room was suddenly too small, too crowded. He was boxed in on all sides, walls closing in, and all he could see was his brother, tall and thin and - Klaus had always hated training, hated fighting, had always let Luther give bruise after bruise rather than lift a hand against him. Diego remembered the doctor telling him about the bruises covering Klaus’s body, the cracked rib, the black eye. It was mostly healed now, but it was all he could see, a collection of all the injuries he’d ever seen on his brother over the years, a patchwork made up of past and present. The scratches were still plain on his face, still painful and torn, put there by his own fucking hands.

“I have to g-go,” Diego blurted. “Just - I’ll be back, don’t go, I’ll be - Just for a few hours.”

He inched past Klaus, careful not to accidentally touch, feeling like his skin was on fire. 

“Diego?” Klaus said, soft and confused, brows drawn over his big eyes, bright and clear and Diego couldn’t help but wonder how cloudy they would have been, what his customers would have seen in them - 

Klaus didn’t move to stop him, didn’t take a step after him, and Diego made a grateful escape. He didn’t know where he was going, just knew he had to get away from the gym, from his house, from Klaus. Eudora’s, maybe, if she would have him, or maybe he’d just take a drive down the streets, would track alleys and shady corners and picture his brother crouched there, on the pavement, high and bruised and alone while Diego mopped floors or got coffee with Eudora or told people he didn’t have a family.

He’d left his police scanner back at home and it was early morning now, not a prime time for robbers or home invaders, but Diego had his knives and his mask in the car. Maybe he could prowl the streets and keep an ear out, follow any suspicious whispers until he found something, someone, to fight, someone with a face he could imagine selling drugs or buying prostitutes.

It was easier to stop seeing his twig of a brother when he put on the mask, easy to forget he’d left him at home, alone, with any number of things to pawn. He’d worry later, after, when he was on his way back. First he had to find some assholes, let off some steam, ignore Eudora’s disappointed voice in his ear.

-

It was past lunchtime by the time Diego headed home. He picked up a couple of sandwiches and two cups of coffee at a gas station on his way, then turned around and stopped at Griddy’s for a dozen donuts, making sure to grab a couple jelly-filled. They’d been Klaus’s favourites as kids.

He hated being nervous to enter his own goddamn home, so he decided he wouldn’t be.

Klaus immediately jumped up from the bed as he came in, eyes tracking him quietly, anxiously. Diego didn’t know what to say, words stuck on his tongue, so he just carried the food to the table and dumped it. He held out one of the coffees to his brother, not looking in his direction. 

After a moment, Klaus took it from him.

“Diego,” he said reluctantly, thumbing the plastic lid of the to-go container. “Diego, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have - I’ve been reliably informed that was probably a pretty shitty way for you to find out about, uh, you know. I didn’t think - well. Sorry.”

In response, Diego thrust the box of donuts at him. Klaus blinked at them, dazed, before tentatively reaching out and snagging one of the jelly-filled.

“Thank… you?” he said.

Diego blindly chose a donut to cram in his own mouth. He finally turned to look at his brother properly, and he was relieved to see him whole and not vibrating into another dimension. Probably not high then, which was a good sign. But he was visibly nervous and uncertain, still holding the donut between two fingers like he wasn’t sure what to do with it, and he was watching Diego closely.

“Sorry for running out like that,” Diego said gruffly. “I had some work to do.”

Klaus bobbed his head in easy acceptance, but he looked distracted. His eyes bounced away from Diego, landed on an empty corner for a moment, then bounced back. He squeezed the donut a little too hard. Some of the jelly oozed out.

“Listen,” Klaus said awkwardly, grimacing. “What you said before about - my powers.”

Diego winced. “I didn’t mean to say that. I shouldn’t have,” he said, which was as close to an apology as he was willing to give right now.

“You were right,” Klaus said, which made Diego still. “Not about - some stuff, obviously, but, uh. About me never telling you things. I didn’t - don’t - really like talking about it. Them. The ghosts.” He waved a hand dismissively, striving to look unaffected, but Diego didn’t miss how the hand shook.

He wasn’t sure if he was really ready for another eye-opening confrontation with Klaus just yet, but he felt bad for running away and he was pretty sure neither of them had eaten yet. So Diego dropped into one of the kitchen chairs and kicked out the other, pointedly shoving a sandwich forward.

Klaus slid into the seat and abandoned his donut on the table. He kept the coffee cupped between his hands.

“So,” he said brightly, knuckles white, scratches stark. “Let me tell you a ghost story.”

-

Klaus stayed with him without complaint for another two weeks. 

In that time, Diego tried his best not to be a total asshole, but also not to be too nice? Which normally wouldn’t be a problem, but he kept finding himself defaulting to the more civil demeanour he adopted around Eudora and the few people he’d considered friends at the police academy. It didn’t help that Klaus had started waking suddenly from nightmares at night, mumbling in his sleep, words Diego couldn’t always make out but that made him uneasy. Diego didn’t ask what he was dreaming about, because he was pretty sure Klaus wouldn’t like the voice he would use - Klaus called it the Nice voice, and apparently Diego wasn’t the only sibling that bothered him with it.

Their argument from those weeks ago was still a sore point between them, so Diego didn’t ask who the other sibling was.

The withdrawals were finally over, which meant Klaus no longer looked ill all the time, and also that Diego had claim to the bed again. He kept sleeping on the air mattress. 

Diego felt - weird, after learning about the ghosts. He’d been so thoroughly in the dark about Klaus’s powers growing up, believing Reginald, for some reason, when he told them Klaus’s fear of the dark was childish and unfounded. Klaus had never told them otherwise, but Diego had never really asked either, and he had to concede the point when Klaus quietly pointed out they probably wouldn’t have believed him even if he had told them. But he believed Klaus now, and he didn’t really know how to handle it.

Klaus’s powers had always been more of a conceptual thing. They believed he could see ghosts because Reginald had told them it was true, but it had always been easy to dismiss it when they couldn’t actually  _ see  _ the ghosts. Reginald said Klaus conjured ghosts, chose which ones he saw and spoke to, so they’d all rolled their eyes when Klaus covered his ears or cried at thin air. Diego knew now that they’d been so stupid, blindly trusting Reginald’s words, and even when Diego had lost all faith in Reginald, had first realized he hated the man with everything in him, he’d still believed him about Klaus.

Diego knew Klaus hadn’t told him everything, had held some things back even now. He’d said the ghosts were always there, that there were a lot of them at any given time, and that they generally couldn’t carry a normal conversation. He’d said something yelling and anger and threats, but hadn’t elaborated much on the nature of the dead. Diego probably could have asked, but he hadn’t.

Klaus didn’t say anything about what made him scratch himself to ribbons. Diego didn’t ask, and he wasn’t sure he needed to, anyway. The implications kept him up at night.

So he watched Klaus jerk awake from nightmares, watched him dance around shadows and flinch away from things Diego couldn’t see or hear, and he tried not to come across as too pitying or Nice when he noticed Klaus getting jumpy or quiet. It was easier some days, when Klaus was more relaxed, to tease him and kick him under the table when he complained about Diego’s eggs. But as the two weeks dragged to a close, Diego couldn’t help but notice those days had been getting fewer and farther between. 

Almost a month after leaving the hospital and moving in with him, Klaus told him he was leaving.

“Where will you go?” Diego asked, wrestling back the panic that immediately surged up in him. 

Klaus shrugged, biting at his thumbnail. 

“You can stay,” Diego said, tense and worried. “I don’t mind, bro. Seriously, you can keep the bed if you want, or we’ll buy another mattress.”

“I can’t,” Klaus said, sounding regretful. “I’m sorry, Di.”

All things considered, Diego thought things had been going alright lately. A few disagreements here and there, mostly over Klaus’s abysmal food cravings and general life habits, once over Diego’s habit of eating raw eggs. Nothing as bad as that big argument weeks ago. And Klaus hadn’t complained about his Nice voice for several days. Diego wasn’t sure what he’d done to make Klaus feel unwelcome. He asked.

“It’s just so loud,” his brother said, and Diego didn’t think he was talking about the occasional boxing fight they could hear through the walls. “Always so fucking loud. I can’t stay.”

And Klaus had told him about that, too, about how ghosts haunted not only places but people, too. He hadn’t said anything about Diego having ghosts, but they’d all killed people as kids, and Diego had racked up a few hits during his vigilante work. It wasn’t hard to draw conclusions. The headphones Diego had brought back a week ago had seemed to help, but he’d seen how things had been getting progressively worse, nightmares more frequent, music louder.

“I’ll pay for a motel,” he said, because Klaus had nowhere else to go and he wasn’t stupid. The thought of Klaus back on the streets now that Diego knew more was not a pleasant one. “For a few nights, at least, and then I’ll talk to Al about some more shifts and I can - ”

“Di, you can barely afford your own rent,” Klaus said drily, fondly. “It’s sweet and everything that you want to take care of lil ol’ me but I’ll be fine. Honest. Pinky promise, scout’s honour, all that.”

Diego’s thoughts were racing and he couldn’t explain the fear that gripped him other than through a deep-seated concern for his brother. He’d never lived on the streets himself, not really, though he’d temporarily lived out of his car when he was younger; but he’d seen glimpses into Klaus’s life, and he was all too aware of how easy it was to fall into bad habits.

Klaus had been doing well for the past month, had managed his cravings and the withdrawal, but he’d had a roof over his head and Diego beside him, ready to threaten him with tying him to a chair again if need be. Who knew how he might handle it out there, alone. And he still didn’t have a job, and there were precious few things for him to steal from Diego for cash, even if he went through with the theft, which seemed unlikely now. Klaus was a grown man who’d managed on his own for the past seven (ten) years, but Diego was not so subtly terrified for him.

“Promise me you’ll check in,” Diego improvised wildly. “A phone call or a visit - something, just to let me know you haven’t gotten your ass killed. Not all the time, just once a week or two.”

Klaus frowned at him, considering, and things weren’t quite looking in Diego’s favour. But then Klaus rolled his eyes, scowling over Diego’s shoulder, and sighed an agreement.

“And you’ll crash here for a few nights, every now and then,” Diego added, pushing his luck and going for it anyway. “A few nights not spent in a dumpster, to make sure you don’t get fucking pneumonia or something.” He was bullshitting, but he was desperate and Klaus wasn’t saying  _ no _ . 

“You want to get a nanny cam and everything?” Klaus snarked. “How about a tracker up my - ”

“Promise me,” Diego interrupted. “Promise me you’ll check in.”

He felt Klaus scrutinize him closely, suspicious, but he had to know how Diego worried, how he’d always worried, even when they were little. He’d lapsed on his big brother duties in adulthood, had let years go by without seeking out Klaus, making sure he was okay, but he didn’t want to let that happen again.

Klaus let out a gusty sigh and leaned back. “Yes, okay, Mom.”

Klaus left that night, wrapped in his stupid coat and wearing a hat and socks Diego had dug out of his dresser. He’d also shoved money in Klaus’s pocket, forcibly pushing back the part of him that rebelled against giving money to his drug addict brother, and he’d made Klaus sit down to a big dinner before he left. Klaus had rolled his eyes and mocked him for it all, but he’d submitted to the treatment readily enough. He was being weirdly tolerant of Diego’s ‘Nice’ behaviour.

Diego felt wrong letting him leave. He couldn’t force him to stay, not unless he wanted to be a complete asshole, and he knew from experience that forcing Klaus to do anything generally ended in disaster. Everything in him told him it was a mistake letting Klaus go, knowing where he was going and what might happen. But Diego had spent the past month trying to teach himself to trust his sibling more, and he knew, kind of, why Klaus had to leave. 

All the same, he didn’t relax again until Klaus called him six days later, happily reporting he was still sober, thankyouverymuch  _ Mom _ , and hadn’t even been sleeping in a dumpster. Diego rolled his eyes and bitched at him, but internally he was just relieved. 

Klaus continued to check in typically once a week, and Diego worked to convince him to crash on the air mattress for a few nights every now and then. He still hated knowing Klaus was out there, still kept an eye out for him whenever he went out on calls, and still worried, but - as time passed and Klaus kept reporting on his continued sobriety, Diego slowly stopped worrying as much that Klaus would slip. There were other concerns that kept him up at night, but for the first time in a decade, drugs weren't one of the main ones.

For the first time in a long time, with his relationship with Eudora thawing and his brother showing up randomly on his doorstep with donuts every now and then, Diego thought he could be happy, like this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next in the series: klaus visits luther. neither of them are thrilled


End file.
